An Exploration of the use of Complete Songs as Auditory Progress Bars

Abstract

This paper examines the results of a study conducted to determine if Auditory Progress Bars consisting of complete songs of varying duration would allow listeners to accurately estimate the amount of time they were on telephone hold, while at the same time producing acceptable customer satisfactions scores. Previous research by the authors has shown that a subset of auditory progress bars consisting of sinusoidal wave forms in different configurations do indeed allow listeners to accurately estimate time, while other configurations did not. However, this research also showed that all of the tonal auditory progress bars had exceptionally low customer satisfaction scores. The current research demonstrates that auditory progress bars comprised of complete songs produce both accurate hold time estimates and high consumer satisfaction scores. Implications for the design of auditory progress bars and directions for further research are discussed.